Characters and events of Roman History eBook

Certainly Caesar never suspected when he was fighting
the Gauls, that the great-grandsons of the vanquished
would live in villas modelled on the Roman, but more
sumptuous; that the great Gallic nobles would have
the satisfaction of parading before the people that
conquered them a latinity more impressive and magnificent;
and that some day the Gaul put by him to fire and
sword would get the better, in empire, in wealth,
in culture, of even Italy.

Nero

On the 13th of October of 54 A.D., when Emperor Claudius
died, the Senate chose as his successor his adopted
son, Nero, a young man of seventeen, fat and short-sighted,
who had until then studied only music, singing, and
drawing. This choice of a child-emperor, who
lacked imperial qualities and suggested the child kings
of Oriental monarchies, was a scandalous novelty in
the constitutional history of Rome. The ancient
historians, especially Tacitus, considered the event
as the result of an intrigue, cleverly arranged by
Nero’s mother, Agrippina, a daughter of Germanicus
and granddaughter of Agrippa, the builder of the Pantheon.
According to these historians, Agrippina, a highly
ambitious woman, induced Claudius to marry her after
Messalina’s death, although she was a widow and
had a child, and as soon as she entered the emperor’s
mansion she began to open the way for the election
of her son. In order to exclude Britannicus, the
son of Messalina, from succession, she persuaded Claudius
to adopt Nero; then, with the help of the two tutors
of the young man, Seneca and Burrhus, created in the
Senate and among the Praetorians, a party favourable
to her son; no sooner did she feel that she could rely
on the Senate and the Praetorians, than she poisoned
Claudius.

Too many difficulties prevent our accepting this version.
To cite one of them will suffice: if Agrippina
wished—­as she surely did—­that
her son should succeed Claudius, she must also have
wished that Claudius would live at least eight or
ten years longer. As a great-grandson of Drusus,
a grandson of Germanicus and the last descendant of
his line, the only line in the whole family enjoying
a real popularity, Nero was sure of election if he
were of age at the death of Claudius. After the
terrible scandal in which his mother had disappeared,
Britannicus was no longer a competitor to be feared.
There was only one danger for Nero, if Claudius should
die too soon, the Senate might refuse to trust the
Empire to a child.

I believe that Claudius died of disease, probably,
if we can judge from Tacitus’s account, of gastroenteritis,
and that Agrippina’s coterie, surprised by this
sudden death, which upset all their plans, decided
to put through Nero’s election in spite of his
youth, in order to insure the power to the line of
Drusus, which had so much sympathy among the masses.
As a matter of fact, the admiration for Drusus and
his family triumphed over all other considerations: